39

My mom was about two months past her 39th birthday when she passed away. She’d spent the previous year in and out of the hospital as she battled a kidney/blood disease and her body ultimately gave out. She passed in her sleep, taking a nap while I sat in the living room, 12 years old and completely unprepared for such a foundational shift in my life.

My relationship to the memories of my mother has always been a bit hazy. Being only 12 when she passed means I was hardly yet a “woman”—I was barely a preteen. Most of the memories of her last year of life were from hospital bedsides and hallways as we navigated her illness and tried to ensure she got the care that she needed. 

What is enduring is the memory of her smile. Her too-loud laugh was always one of my favorite things. She knew how to throw back her head and laugh with wild abandon. When I get truly caught up in laughter, it bubbles out of me, as well. 

Other memories? Her talent with voices—her own singing voice was beautiful, but even better were the affectations she could effortlessly produce: her Swedish Chef and Elmer Fudd were unmatched. I have distinct memories of sitting in the back of the car giggling as she produced a delightful rendition of Bruce Springsteen’s “Fire,” a la Elmer Fudd.

Losing my mom so young was never going to hit me as hard until I got older, really. It’s the moments when I wonder what she’d say about a question I have or how her life experience compared to my own where I find I fall into the well of grief (whose edge I’ve become keenly aware of over the years). 

I came home from a trip to New York with dad in July carting multiple shoeboxes full of family mementos from her side of the family. It’s been so wild to flip through photos of her as a child and a young woman. A whole era of time that I can’t ever ask her about directly, but thankfully I have a window through these photos and the stories that others carry of her.

Thumbing through the boxes of mementos, one thing nearly took my breath away. A short hand-written letter, dated March 27, 1985, from my mom to my Nana and Papa. My parents had recently relocated to North Carolina, to the Air Force base in Goldsboro where I’d be born less than a year and a half afterwards. Her handwriting was always lovely, and I recognized it instantly when I pulled it out of the box. Mom would have been in her mid-20’s at the time.

In the letter, she sends her love back home, choosing to write a letter in hopes of “trying to keep the phone bill down,” and she is full of reassurances for her family about their new life begun in NC. Times were tight, but she wrote with so much hope for the future—a new job was on the horizon with management prospects, so money wouldn’t be so tight soon. She also writes on how pleased she is with “being able to cook good meals,” how even with her day job, she expects to be able to “keep house fairly well,” closing out this section by saying “You’d be pretty proud of me if you could see what a home maker I’ve become!” It’s like this time capsule—this window into my parents’ early married life. 

A week from today, my 39th birthday arrives. I’ve been wrestling with really complex feelings about this particular birthday, heavy with the realization that I’ll at last be as old as she was—older, in fact, in just a few months’ time. There’s a cosmic unfairness that settles in my bones at the thought of being older than she ever got to be. It’s an imbalance. It feels wrong. I’m certain that anyone else who’s lost a sibling or a parent at a younger age understands this same unfairness in time, as well. 

When I read through her letter the first time, I found my eyes prickling with tears at her signature. Reading her closing, so full of love and care for her family back home, signed with “X’s + O’s,” was such a sweet window into her heart. I passed the letter off to dad, who had a similar reaction to being able to see, hold, and hear her for the first time in the over 25 years since she passed. It’s a treasure I’ll hold onto and continue to reread whenever I’m craving a sense of connection to her. 

I’m not sure what the point of writing all of this was. I just know I’ve needed to acknowledge this birthday and the ball of feelings it’s been batting around. Another year older. Another step across a divide that threatens to fuzzy my memories of the too-short time we had together as time continues to march on. All the more reason to keep flipping through photos and rereading letters and getting to know facets of her in every way I can. 

I’ve been doing my best to try and get into a “birthday spirit” about turning 39. Even a birthday as bittersweet as this one should still be a celebratory occasion. I’m not sure how I’ll ring it in just yet, but I know mom will be heavy on my mind as it approaches in the coming week. 

Grief doesn’t have a finish line, and neither does love. Both just shift shape as the years go on. This birthday feels heavier than most, but it also feels sacred in its own way. A reminder that I’m still here, still growing older, still laughing too loud—and in that, she still lives.